Monitoring Sources and Segments to Create New Products

Grand View Media closely watches its sources, and database, to discover opportunities for new product launches. In this case, two new, digital-only products.

By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Monday, March 2, 2009

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Now that the industry has moved towards a multi-platform environment, publishers are discovering ways to uncover new audience segments that used to be hidden. Audience developers are finding that by taking a detailed view of their customers, they can be sure that their editorial content is right for their target audience and even create new products specifically for those groups.

“We like to sit down and take a good, hard look at our qualification cards every six months,” says Delicia Poole, director of circulation and fulfillment, Grand View Media Group. “We look to see if there are any business activities and/or job functions that we’re having trouble getting to respond. We combine this with a listing of ‘other’ responses for both business activity and job function to see if there is a new segment of the industry that needs our focus.”

Poole says that e-newsletter subscribers who aren’t current magazine subscribers get folded in as well. “By putting all of this together, you can see if your editorial content needs to change or if you need to change who you are targeting to meet your editorial content,” she says.

Customer databases could also be used to detect changes in market and business activity, according to Poole. “In one of our larger markets, we were told that we needed to make sure that the majority of our focus was spent on building business activity X and job function Y,” she says. “Now, we're discovering that business activity A and job function B are the ones that need our focus.”

Poole says she also finds it helpful to listen in on telemarketing calls, especially on new-name campaigns. “After listening, you sometimes find that these people are not at all the people who would benefit from the editorial focus of your magazine,” she says. “Had you not taken that extra step to listen in on the calls, you would have to be reactive to a change in the marketplace instead of being proactive.”

As a result of staying on top of the market, Poole says that her staff discovered that several markets have an international appeal. So, they launched two digital-only publications—Global Processing and Water Tech World. “They have both opened up new lines of communication throughout their industries and, thus, new revenue streams.”